In a world where we instinctually reject a lot of advertising (‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube) and even pay to not be marketed to (Spotify Premium) — Instagram Stories offer a saving grace.

It’s like a conveyor belt of consumption: you get on it by innocently clicking on a photo of your friend’s dinner. Before you know it you’ve tapped through 30 people’s Instagram Stories, watched 5 adverts, swiped up to see links from influencers’ wardrobes, and you’re not sure where the last 20 minutes of your life went.

Once you’re on the conveyor belt, it’s hard to get off.

The addictive design of Instagram Stories has us stuck viewing them for longer than we ever plan to. We don’t know what’s coming up next, and it’s easy to keep clicking through rather than exiting.

I’m not basing this on my personal experience alone. Instagram Business insights show you how many people clicked forward on to the next Story from yours, and how many left the conveyor belt. Looking at Hopper HQ’s account, on average 80% of users ‘Forward Tap’ through Instagram Stories rather than ‘Exit’, proving that people like to stay on for the ride.

Instagram Stories therefore lock users into watching things they didn’t even know they wanted to, which is why it’s the perfect place for businesses to be. Don’t believe us? Check out this infographic for 30 amazing business case studies!

Without further ado, here are 14 things you can start doing on Instagram Stories now to raise your brand’s profile, grow engagement and convert more customers!

Instagram Stories lock users into watching things they didn’t even know they wanted to, which is why it’s the perfect place for businesses to be!
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P.S for more tips for your business Instagram account, check out:
 How To Create A Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy 

Contents:
1. Announcements
2. Collaborations 
3. Highlights 
4. Polls 
5. Questions 
6. Reaction Slider 
7. Countdown 
8. Links 
9. Templates 
10. Location Stickers 
11. Hashtag Stickers #⃣
12. ‘New Post’ 
13. Contests 
14. Live 

1) Announcements

Due to the instant nature of Instagram Stories, they’re a great way to share company announcements such as new products, new staff members and general updates!

These moments are a brilliant opportunity to post behind-the-scenes footage of the company that wouldn’t necessarily earn a spot on your main profile. Your followers will feel like they’re privy to the latest info, as well as getting to know you and the business. You can add multiple photos to your Instagram Story to make it more engaging for your followers.

These personal insights could be anything from packaging a new product to playing a prank on a colleague. They will help convey the human side of your company, and consequently boost brand awareness and engagement!

            
We used an Instagram Story to announce the arrival of Analytics. Click here to start your free trial today!

2) Collaborations

Instagram Stories offer a great way for brands and influencers to collaborate!

You can team up with a relevant business you think your followers could benefit from getting to know, or perhaps a customer who happens to be an influencer. I’ll give you an example…

Content curators Quuu are a start-up operating in a fully remote team, and so their Instagram account concentrates on all aspects of remote work and co-working!

During the month of February, Hopper HQ were working remotely from Thailand, and we saw a great opportunity for a collaboration. We prepared ‘A Day In The Life Of A Remote Team’ to feature on their profile, and their team put together a series of video tips for staying productive while working remotely, which we posted on our Story.

This gave both businesses some new exposure, and was generally a lot of fun to produce! Similarly, we could’ve posted a Q&A interview with Quuu, or mutually shouted out/promoted one another.

Just a heads up, some of these kinds of collaborations might be paid for, particularly if they involve influencers! Even so, there’s loads of different ways you could collaborate over Instagram Story, so think about how your business could benefit from it.

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3) Story Highlights

Instagram Story Highlights have been a game changer since they were released in December 2017.

For regular users they act as a personal show reel of ‘best bits’. But for brands, being able to pin Stories to the top of your profile essentially acts as an extension of your bio.

As a business you can utilise highlights to tell people that land on your page who you are, what you do and why you do it, as well as displaying your product or service! Create Stories for the purpose of being Highlights, with an eye catching cover they’ll transform your Instagram page into a brochure!

These are both great examples of companies utilising Highlights in their Instagram marketing! They have attention grabbing covers, and provide so much more content for users to look through, ultimately keeping people on their page for longer.

4) Polls

Gone are the days of boring customer questionnaires, get your answers with just a tap!

Using polls in your Instagram Stories is a great way to drive interaction with your followers. You can use them for market research, customer feedback, or just to get to know your audience and have a bit of fun!

The possibilities with polls are endless, and it’s possible to think of highly relevant creative campaigns specific to your brand or target demographic!

For example, Swell (whose Instagram game is fantastic – check them out) have used polls to share important information with their audience in the form of a quiz:

We think brand client interaction on Stories is a trend that will only get bigger! As Instagram keep releasing features to encourage real conversation and brand loyalty. Bringing us on to our next suggestion…

5) Questions

The questions sticker made it possible for brands to invite their audience to ask them any burning questions, as well as ask their audience questions themselves!

This is such a great feature for building a community and encouraging customer interaction. By showing they care about their customers opinion, and also that they’re present to answer questions positions a brand as reliable, human, and kind — which in turn engenders customer loyalty!

Here are two different examples of how to use the questions sticker on Stories, either open forum, or specific feedback:

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6) Reaction Slider

A fun addition to Instagram Stories, allowing users to respond to the content of your Stories. ]

Interactions on Instagram Stories all feed back to the algorithm about how good content is and how engaged users are with it. It’s therefore a good tactic for brands to use reaction sliders to boost their engagement rate!

Most of the time, brands use this feature with heart eyes, to gage how much their audience like a product. However, there are many creative ways to utilise the slider on your Instagram Stories, check out the example below from Colour Pop Cosmetics:

7) Countdown

A recent addition to Instagram Stories, the countdown sticker is a great feature for brands to promote competitions, sales, and announcements.

Users can set reminders for the countdown deadline, and brands receive this data so they know exactly how many (and which) of their audience are most engaged!

This data is another great feature for helping build community, and we can see Instagram continuing to develop these kinds of features in 2022.

Explore The Data Behind Your Social Media Accounts

Find the best time to post, track your follower growth, and understand what content works best with post and account analytics.

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8) Links

 Sadly, this feature is currently only available for accounts with 10k followers or more.

If you belong to that lucky group of businesses, then you get to include external links in your Instagram Stories!

As we all know, Instagram doesn’t allow functioning links anywhere but the bio (they’re trying to keep us on their app, and it’s working) so to have them in Stories is a serious bonus. The link will redirect users to a browser within Instagram, meaning when you cross off you’ll pick up right where you left off.

Make the most of this feature by including clear call to actions in your Stories: ‘SHOP SALE NOW’, ‘START FREE TRIAL’, ‘BOOK TODAY’ so people know where they’re heading when they ‘Swipe Up’.

9) Story Templates

You might have noticed an emergence of Story Templates being used by influencers and on-trend brands on Instagram Stories last year. These are nicely designed templates that can be screenshotted and completed by users, predominantly so their followers can get to know them. For example:

As you can see, these templates are branded by the influencer who designed them. When their followers screenshot them and fill them in on their own Instagram Stories, they are essentially doing their marketing for them.

There is a great opportunity for brands to get involved here! Think about your target audience and the things that they engage with. Then make a Story Template in your company branding for them to complete and share. Fill it in yourself too, as it’s a great way to give your followers some more information about your business or company culture.

 Anyone who makes a template off the back of this blog, I’d love to see them! Drop me a tweet (@Nicola_HHQ) or send them direct to @hopper_hq on Instagram!

10) Location Stickers

Instagram is all about community and bringing people together over shared interests. Increase the discoverability of your Instagram Stories by always tagging locations!

They will be added to that location’s official Story, and therefore people that don’t follow you will be able to watch them. Such a quick and simple trick that will get you far more impressions on your Stories.

11) Hashtag Stickers #⃣

Similarly, hashtags in Instagram Stories work to the same effect, meaning that your Story will be added to a larger Story compiling every Story using that hashtag (that was a mouthful).

Do your research on which hashtags are most used by your target audience and your competitors and include these in your Stories! Check out our All In One Guide To Instagram Hashtags for more info on hashtag strategy!

Instagram is all about bringing people together over a shared interest
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12) ‘New Post’

Due to the current workings of the Instagram Algorithm, it matters how fast your Instagram posts get engagement (read more here). As a result, more and more users have begun promoting their most recent post on their Instagram Stories, usually blocking out the thumbnail to entice people to click on to their profile to see it.

Those with over 10k followers can link to the post with a CTA to ‘Swipe Up To Like’, encouraging higher and faster engagement. This trick must be working from the huge amount of accounts doing it right now, so go give it a try on your business Instagram!

            

13) Contests

Got a great product or service to give away? Create a bit of buzz by hosting a contest on your brand’s Instagram Story!

The good thing with hosting competitions over Stories is that there’s only 24 hours to enter, creating a sense of urgency for your followers. Photograph or video the prize and include rules for entering, i.e ‘reply to this Story with your email address to enter’. You can then collate all the data to randomly pick a winner after the competition has ended!

You can also use Instagram Stories to promote a competition being run on your main profile! As a result of the current algorithm, many of your followers might not see a post announcing a giveaway.

Use Stories to tell your followers and push them in the right direction to enter! Using hashtags such as #giveaway,  #contest and #competition will make your Story discoverable to people that don’t follow you, and therefore increase your reach!

14) Live

Instagram Live offers a great way for businesses to drive engagement! Prepare for it in advance so you can let your followers know it will be happening and promote it elsewhere.

The more viewers and engagement your Live video gets, the more likely it is to be featured in ‘Top live’ on the Explore page, so it’s good to try and get as many people tuned in as possible. This will also give you and your colleagues time to plan what you’ll be doing and saying during the live stream!

If you’re wondering what kinds of things your business could use Live for, the possibilities are endless! Many brands use Live to unveil new products or features, document events, film interviews, hold Q&As with their followers or offer limited-time discounts.

Instagram are trying to push Live to become the next big thing, so they help promote it by notifying your followers that you’ve started a live stream. Live videos also hold pride of place at the top of the Stories bar! This means your video will be the first thing people see when they get on the Story conveyor belt.

Parting Words

With over 300 million people on the Instagram Story conveyor belt every day, it’s a no-brainer to include in your social media marketing strategy. Utilise the temporary and laid-back nature of Stories to show off how awesome your company and product/service is!

Happy posting

 Do you use Stories in any other ways? I’d love to hear about what works for your business! Leave a comment or tweet me @Nicola_HHQ!

Utilise the temporary and laid-back nature of Instagram Stories to share how awesome your company is!
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Hopper HQ is the Instagram scheduling tool that saves social media managers and agencies time. Start your 14-day trial today!

The post 14 Brilliant Ways To Use Instagram Stories For Business appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Social media is a staple area of digital marketing for businesses of all shapes and sizes, industries and audiences.

However, with updates and new releases making it an ever-shifting landscape, brands need to keep up to date with the latest developments and changes to the space in order to benefit from their social channels.

Apply the practical advice in this guide to help strategise your social media marketing plan for 2023…

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1. Social Media Marketing: The Basics

In 2023, it’s estimated that 3.5 billion people will use social media networks worldwide. That’s almost 40% of the globe’s population. With those kinds of figures, it’s no surprise that businesses put so much effort into social media marketing.

If you’re just starting out on your social media marketing journey, I recommend you check out our Social Media Marketing Glossary for a full list of definitions to bring you up-to-date with all the jargon!

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing refers to business activity on social media platforms which contributes to marketing objectives such as brand awareness, website traffic, and customer acquisition.

This activity is predominantly in the form of content —such as text, images and videos — but also includes community engagement and paid ads.

At the heart of great social media content is the audience’s desire to share it. When your audience share your content, they become your channel of distribution.

Whether it’s tagging a friend in an Instagram post or retweeting something to their audience, content that is highly relevant and visually attractive is likely to receive high engagement and shares.

What is the most effective social media channel?

There’s no straightforward answer to this, and social media marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

Different social media channels generate better results than others for certain business objectives, and the content published will also vary depending on these factors.

For example, a video on Facebook is unlikely to be more effective for driving business audience traffic than an article on LinkedIn, and so on. The great thing about this is that you can utilise the different social channel’s purposes for different kinds of marketing campaigns, ensuring the content is highly tailored for that platform and audience. More on this in the strategy section!

(As you can see, there’s immediately a lot to consider when it comes to social media marketing, so it’s no wonder companies have whole departments dedicated to the cause…)

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

As mentioned, the specific business outcomes of social media marketing campaigns (such as sales, traffic etc) will depend on what objectives you set in the first place.

However, there are other general benefits that come from brands being active on social media, such as:

• Being more discoverable
  If you’re posting content on a number of social media channels that’s tailored to your target demographic, you’re naturally likely to be discovered by new potential customers.
• Having valuable conversations with customers
  It’s no wonder so many companies use Twitter for customer support, or run Q&As on Instagram Stories. Social media marketing offers a personal and informal way to get to know your audience.
• Recruitment opportunities 
  Social media marketing makes it easier than ever to share company culture and the people behind a business with the world. This not only increases customer loyalty but also helps when it comes to hiring brilliant new people!
• Building a community
  No matter your industry, social media marketing helps to connect you with your target audience and other relevant businesses.

With every app-update comes more creative ways to enhance your social media marketing and hit those KPIs.

The benefits are endless, and the more you learn about what platforms and content work best for your objectives, the more you’ll get out of social media marketing!

2. How To Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy

Now we’ve covered a brief overview of what social media marketing is and how it can benefit your business, let’s move on to the practical bit.

Before diving straight in with a few tweets and Instagram posts, all social media marketing activity needs to start with a strategy.

NB. If you’re already well set up with social media marketing and have your strategy in place, you can probably skip this part and head straight to our top tips for 2023!

#1 Set your objectives

As discussed, you can’t plan which channels to use or what kind of content to produce until you determine your business objectives. i.e what do you want your social media marketing to achieve? 

Deciding these targets in advance will:

• Save time and resources
• Ensure you’re not producing content ‘for the sake of it’
• Help you establish the key metrics to track success

These objectives will naturally vary business to business, which is why there isn’t a blanket answer for ‘what works best’.

Write a list of everything you want out of your social media marketing activity, and then prioritise them in terms of value for your business. Once you have your core objectives decided, you can proceed with the next steps…

#2 Outline your audience

Just as it’s important to outline why you’re using social media marketing, you also need to clarify who you’re trying to reach. This will help to determine which social channels will be most effective for your objectives.

For example, 72% of teenagers are on Instagram, whereas the majority of Twitter users are aged 18-29. Depending who your target demographic is, you might decide to prioritise a certain social network over another.

Clearly outline your audience demographic, and go into as much detail as possible: age, gender, location, hobbies, interests, challenges they face, where they hang out, what other brands they like – the lists can go on and on.

Determining these characteristics will ensure you use the best social networks to reach them, and also cater your content to best reach your objectives! See how it all links up?

#3 Market research

Analysing your competitors’ social media marketing activity is an important and valuable part of your strategy. After all, their target audience is your target audience. Spend some time researching:

• Which platforms they’re most active on
• What kind of content they publish
• How much average engagement they get
• What hashtags they use
• What tone of voice they use
• What kind of conversations they have with their audience
• What call to action they promote

The list goes on…

Taking the time to do this social media marketing analysis will put you in a good position to decide which platforms are best for your audience and objectives, as well as help you get to know your target demographics’ behaviour on social media.

#4 Prioritise social networks

With all of the above strategising, you should now have a pretty good idea of which social networks are most valuable to your business.

All social channels can benefit all businesses in some ways, but you will spread yourself too thinly by trying to be highly active on all of them.

Instead, prioritise which networks are the most effective for your audience and business objectives, and focus on producing different kinds of content to maximise results.

If you sell a consumer product which lends itself well to visual marketing, Instagram should be the obvious choice. Contrastingly, if you are a B2B service provider you’ll probably find Twitter or LinkedIn more effective.

Find out how to verified on Twitter here.

#5 Set brand guidelines

This an important step for any social media marketing strategy, particularly if you’re working in a team.

Brand guidelines should cover all details regarding brand activity on social media – and should be clear and accessible to everyone with access to the social accounts.

Outlining these details early on in your social media marketing strategy will ensure everyone is on the same page, and help you create a consistent and recognisable brand persona on social media.

Here are some things you’ll want to consider including in your social media marketing brand guidelines:

• Brand voice
  What kind of tone/language do you use? Is it the same on every platform?
  
• Use of emojis
  How formally/informally do you want to be perceived? 
• Use of hashtags 
  Which hashtags do you always use on each social network? Which do you want to avoid?
• Protocol on interacting with audience 
  Who is responsible for replying to comments and messages? Do you reply personally or as the brand?
• Banned words/topics 
  There are some things you never want your brand to talk about on social media – even if it’s obvious to you, avoid any potential faux pas by outlining them in the guidelines

These are just a few examples – but the list will go on depending on your brand and how many social networks you’re using in your marketing.

Remember, however you decide to portray your brand on social media, the important thing is that you stick to your guidelines! You want your audience to feel a familiarity that will engender loyalty, so ensure your activity across all social networks is consistent.

Missguided have a very clear and recognisable brand voice on Instagram which is well aligned with their target demographic:

 

 

 

 

 

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HAPPY 1ST DECEMBER BABES #missguided #christmas

A post shared by MISSGUIDED (@missguided) on Dec 1, 2018 at 12:00pm PST

#6 Plan your content

Now comes the more creative part – deciding what type of content will best achieve your objectives on each social network. This may vary depending on resources, but predominantly involves weighing up:

• Photos
• Videos
• Graphics
• Articles
• Livestreams
• Stories

It’s hard to know where to start, so try and think about your target audience and really get to the heart of what matters to them and what they’re most likely to react to.

If you’ve carried out your demographic and competitor market research thoroughly, this hopefully won’t be too difficult a decision!

All of these content options have sub-categories to consider, for example, if you decide that Instagram photos will make up the majority of your content, you’ll need to think about:

• What the photos are of
• What style they are taken in
• Colour scheme and feed aesthetic
• Who will take them
• Where they’ll be taken
• Using user-generated photographs

A lot of these details will take shape as you get going and learn what your audience best respond to, and it’s good to adjust your content accordingly!

#7 Use a content calendar

Social media marketing is a huge task, especially when you’re active across many different channels. Without sufficient planning, it’s easy to post sporadically or neglect certain social networks.

The best way to stay on top of all this content is using a social media marketing calendar, so you can see how frequently you are publishing and ensure posting consistency.

Using a content calendar, you can plan ahead for big events or milestones, brand announcements, or relevant social media holidays!

#8 Schedule social media content

If you want to save yourself hours of time and generally enhance the quality of your social media marketing, you need to schedule content.

Using an automated management and scheduling tool like Hopper HQ, you can bulk upload your photos, videos and text posts for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter — and set them to be published in the weeks ahead!

Scheduling social media content in advance improves efficiency, keeping everything in one place and freeing up more time for content creation and other creative aspects of social media marketing.

For practical advice on how to get started, check out our step-by-step guides for how to schedule posts on Instagram and Facebook!

#9 Track your metrics

Last but definitely not least! One of the most important aspects of social media marketing is that you track the metrics and KPIs linked to your objectives for each social network.

It’s all well and good putting out excellent material and engaging with your audience, but if you aren’t listening to the numbers you won’t learn what works best. You might think a Facebook campaign is brilliant, but if it doesn’t do what it was meant to, then it’s a waste of time and resources.

By tracking key metrics you can develop and optimise your activity and become excellent at social media marketing!

With business social media accounts, you have access to insights such as reach, impressions, engagement as well as information about your audience demographics, such as age, gender and location.

Whether you’re just starting out with social media marketing or are looking to reconsider your strategy, follow those 9 steps to skyrocket your presence across social media networks and smash those targets!

3. Hopper HQ’s Top Social Media Marketing Tips For 2023

Now you’re feeling ready to dive into social media marketing, here are some of our top tips for your strategy in 2023 for Instagram and Facebook…

Instagram

The most engaged social media channel in the world, Instagram is a necessity for brands of all shapes and sizes. The Instagram algorithm is constantly evolving, and consequently changing the game for social media marketing.

With competition higher than ever, brands needs to keep up to date with new features in order to grow an engaged following on Instagram.

 More info on the Instagram Algorithm here

#1 Post user-generated content

Instagram is first and foremost about community, and one of the best performing types of post on the app is user-generated content.

This is when brands share photos taken by a user on their business profile, and is a great opportunity to acknowledge customers while spreading brand awareness.

User-generated content has a 4.5% higher conversion rate on Instagram, proving its value for businesses. UGC is really a win win for consumer and brand for a number of reasons…

Benefits of User-Generated Content on Instagram:

• Community building
  By acknowledging and encouraging customer’s posts about your business, you’re interacting with your audience and building a community!
• Customer loyalty
  Stemming from this sense of community is an increase in customer loyalty. If you’re taking the time to engage with your customers and share their content on your profile, they will feel happy and fall in love with your brand that little bit more.
• Free content
  A huge perk of UGC is that your customers are essentially doing your social media marketing for you! 75% of users find UGC more authentic, and finding ways to humanise your brand on Instagram is always a win.
• Increased reach
  UGC often receives higher engagement than branded content, meaning the algorithm will receive the nod that it’s a strong post and increase its reach. Similarly, the person who took the photo is highly likely to share the post or tag friends in the comments!

The king of user-generated content on Instagram is undoubtedly GoPro, with almost 100% of their content being taken by athletes and explorers in their community!

They’ve made UGC align so perfectly with their brand, showing that it’s not just about the camera, but about where you go and what you do with it.

Their Instagram profile has become a travel and adventure inspiration feed with their product at the core, all thanks to user-generated content:

 

 

 

 

 

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One month left in 2018. Where will you go? • @girl_lovinglife threw rules to the wind + set her imagination free to capture this #BucketList view in France. Show us how you’re closing out the year by uploading your shots on gopro.com/awards. • • • @GoProFR #GoProFR #GoPro #December #Mediterranean #2018 #NewYear #Coastal

A post shared by GoPro (@gopro) on Dec 1, 2018 at 6:53am PST

But it’s not only products that can utilise UGC on Instagram! Websites such as Booking.com share photos of incredible travel destinations taken by the Instagram community, making their feed a haven for anyone with a dose of wanderlust.

Similarly, Parkrun share their members’ running posts to tell their stories of fitness and positivity. These are great examples of brands thinking outside of the box, celebrating their community, and using UGC to make their social media marketing more meaningful.

 

 

 

 

 

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“parkrun no 41 at Severn Bridge parkrun: Blustery and tough going up!” Pete Johnson #loveparkrun #parkrun

A post shared by parkrun UK (@parkrunuk) on Dec 5, 2018 at 3:00am PST

How to use User-Generated Content on Instagram:

Sounds good right? You can make the most of this social media marketing strategy in 2023 by sharing photos your community are posting!

Create a brand hashtag for your business profile and encourage your followers to use it so you can find all relevant UGC on Instagram.

Remember: you need consent to repost somebody’s content! Drop a comment on the post asking permission to feature it on your profile – this is also a great chance to chat to customers and get your brand personality across!

#2 Post when your audience are active

This may sound obvious, but is more important than ever as the Instagram algorithm continues to change the way we use the app.

The faster an Instagram post gets likes, comments and shares, the higher the algorithm ranks it as a piece of content, revealing it to more of your audience and giving it an organic boost.

The easiest way to ensure fast engagement on your posts is to publish them when the majority of your followers are online and actively using Instagram.

The team here at Hopper HQ built a free tool to make finding your best time to post on Instagram as easy as possible – simply follow the link below and connect your business Instagram account!

#3 Plan Instagram campaigns around social media holidays

A tip to increase the reach of your Instagram posts is to utilise hashtags that will be getting a lot of attention in a short space of time, such as global events (#Superbowl), social media holidays (#NationalCoffeeDay), and time-limited trends (#ThrowbackThursday).

Thankfully, we live in a modern world where everything seems to have a commemorative day of some kind, and so there’s plenty of opportunities to make the most of the boost in traffic no matter your industry!

Take a leaf out of this hotel’s book, who utilised #NationalPineappleDay to create some fun and unique content relevant to their business:

 

 

 

 

 

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Shades on, blue skies, no worries. What better way to celebrate #nationalpineappleday! #westinmaui #nationalsunglassesday @blinnkphotography

A post shared by TheWestinMaui (@thewestinmaui) on Jun 27, 2018 at 1:46pm PDT

Never miss a hashtag opportunity! Sign up to Trending to get the week’s social media holidays and trends straight to your inbox every Monday morning

#4 Make the most of Instagram Stories

Stories were a complete game changer when Instagram introduced them back in 2016, and they have not stopped developing valuable features since.

If you decide Instagram is the primary network for your social media marketing, Stories need to be a part of the plan. They are incredibly diverse, and the 24 hour time limit allows brands to be a bit less regimented with the content they put out.

You can do a lot design-wise on Instagram Stories directly, however, if you want to take it to the next level check out these free Instagram Story templates.

Here’s just a few things your business can try out on Instagram Stories:

• Go behind the scenes
  The beauty of Stories is the personal and authentic nature of them. Use the casual format to show your company culture and let your followers into the world of your business.
• Questions
  Use the questions sticker to run an anonymous Q&A with your audience, or to gain customer feedback.
• Polls
  Similarly, encourage follower interaction and feedback with the poll sticker.
• Story takeover
  Collaborate with an influencer, or another brand with the same audience as you, and try out a Story takeover.
• Tag locations
  Get your Story featured on a location Story by using the location sticker! This will increase your reach and could result in more followers.
• Go live
  Plan a livestream via Instagram Story – whether it’s an event, a Q&A, a sneak preview or something else – Live Stories are naturally featured higher up in Story feed.

For more in-depth Instagram Story tips and examples to help your social media marketing, check out:

 14 Ridiculously Easy Ways To Use Instagram Stories For Your Business

#5 Run an Instagram contest

An Instagram contest is a great social media marketing tactic as they bring in tonnes of likes and comments on a post.

By making the requirement to enter involve ‘tagging a friend’, you also draw lots of new users to your profile, increasing your reach and spreading brand awareness!

There are a number of ways to run an Instagram contest, and the type of competition and prize will naturally vary based on your business. The majority of Instagram contests are in the form of ‘giveaways’, and may be a bundle of products, an experience, or a voucher.

Around Christmas time, many brands are utilising the festive season to host daily giveaways and drive a lot of new users to their profile in a short space of time. This strategy links back to tip #3 and is a great example of planning campaigns in advance for time-sensitive trends!

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s Day 6 of Revlon’s 12 days of Beauty, and we want to help you revive your #skin before the celebrations truly begin! So that’s why we’re giving you our whole range of prep + prime products… to help for the festive #party week! … To #WIN Day 6 of Revlon’s 12 Days of Beauty: 1⃣ Like this gram 2⃣ Tag 3 friends in the comment below 3⃣ Make sure you’re following us @revlon_uk Winner will be announced tomorrow Competition open for the UK ONLY ! Link in bio for T&Cs #giveaway #competition #12daysofbeauty

A post shared by Revlon UK (@revlon_uk) on Dec 6, 2018 at 12:00am PST

For more info and practical tips on how to include Instagram contests in your social media marketing, check out our 5 Step Guide!

Facebook

With over 2 billion monthly users, Facebook remains the biggest social media platform on earth.

As a result, their features for businesses when it comes to social media marketing are incredibly advanced. Despite it being more and more difficult to get organic engagement on Facebook, there’s still plenty of ways you can increase your reach and grow a community on the social network…

#1 Video

Video content is a winner on Facebook. With the platform aiming to become a true hub for video streaming and compete with the big television providers, its focus on video will only grow in 2023.

If you’re looking to use Facebook in your social media marketing, get planning some captivating video content! The possibilities are endless with video, and provide the opportunity for creative freedom.

Regardless of budget and resources, there are many ways to make engaging video content: whether it’s professionally filmed in a studio, intentionally informal on mobile, stop motion or animation – it can work on Facebook!

Most importantly, Facebook video is the best form of content to boost your brand and send you on your way to hitting those objectives we talked about…

The key to creating successful video content for Facebook is to make it instantly captivating. The fact that videos automatically play in News Feed when you land on them is a great opportunity to capture your audience’s attention – although you only have a few seconds!

Remember that a huge proportion of Facebook users watch videos on the app without sound – so make sure to annotate and subtitle all your video content to keep people watching.

You can also use overlaid text to highlight your call to action in your video. What do you want people to do after they’ve watched it? A CTA is particularly important if you’re planning on your video content being a Facebook Ad, as it will help drive users towards your website.

So in your 2023 social media marketing plan, don’t miss out on the opportunities Facebook video provides!

#2 Go Live

Following on from the power of video on Facebook, going Live should be another strategy in your social media marketing plan for 2023.

As with all new features, Facebook promotes accounts using them in order to encourage more users to do so. You’ll notice that ‘Live’ is the first option in the status bar, and you sometimes get notified when someone ‘goes Live’.

All of this demonstrates Facebook’s desire for people to utilise and watch their Live content (another indicator of their plan to become a leader in the streaming space). This is great for businesses, as your content is less likely to get lost in the sea of regular post and videos on the site.

Use the opportunity of Live to stream an event, a product launch, run a Q&A, or share behind the scenes going ons at the business! You can also ‘Bring a friend’ to a Facebook Live video, which is a great feature to run a mini webinar or interview.

#3 Facebook Groups

Facebook is a platform for communities, and in a world where we’re rejecting advertising more than ever, Facebook groups offer a saving grace for individuals looking to share knowledge and support one another.

I know I said all social media marketing activity needs to be linked to business objectives, but that doesn’t always mean sales. An important aspect of social media marketing is community building and brand awareness, and so any activity helping meet these goals is highly valuable.

There are two ways you can utilise Facebook groups to get to know people in your target demographic and establish yourself in the space:

1. Make a community Facebook group related — but not exclusive — to your business
2. Join already established groups and start conversations

The former is naturally more groundwork, but can be very rewarding if you gain a lot of members. The second is great for market research and will ultimately put you in a good position to start your own group.

The most important thing about brand behaviour in Facebook groups is that it’s not self-promotional. The whole purpose of this kind of social media marketing strategy is that it’s community first rather than sales first.

Activity needs to be authentic and human in order to position your brand as a friendly, trustworthy source. Once you have built a relationship with members, you can share your content in a way that is genuinely helpful rather than overly promotional.

#4 Think shares, not sales

Following this line of thought, the key with Facebook content is to have ‘shareability’ at the forefront. The aim is to have people tagging their friends in the comments of your posts and sharing it on their profile.

Whether this is done by being entertaining, informing or thought-provoking, the important questions to ask when planning your Facebook content are: ‘would I watch this?’ and ‘would I share this?’.

One of the most effective ways of increasing your reach on Facebook is by your audience tagging people in the comments. This will not only show your post to the new people tagged, but also to their friends on News Feed.

Often, a brand’s post will appear on your Facebook feed with the preface: ‘[Friend] commented on this post’ or ‘[Friend] was tagged in a comment on this post’. This kind of sharing is invaluable for your brand’s Facebook content, and will mean your posts are seen by far more eyeballs than usual.

A great (and low-cost) way to encourage tagging and sharing is with branded memes appealing to your target audience. Don’t just take my word for it! Look at the difference in these 2 Facebook posts from In The Style:

This post is not a direct sell: it has nothing to do with their products, offers, or even fashion. However, its content is relevant to their audience, and they have included their logo, so when it gets shared, their branding will be shared with it.

Contrastingly, a post including a discount and a clear call to action did not perform anywhere near as well:

These examples show how the social media marketing game has changed, and highlight how shareability needs to be embedded into all Facebook content your brand is producing.

#5 Promote to a lookalike audience

One of the most important and tricky aspects of Facebook ads or promoted content is testing out different target audiences. Facebook offer a great feature called ‘Lookalike Audience’ to help you reach an entirely new group of people who share characteristics with your existing customers and target demographic.

You can choose your source audience based on data from the pixel on your site, email addresses, or Custom Audiences you’ve used in the past on Facebook. Regardless of where these source users are from, you can choose countries to target with for the lookalike audience – and one source audience can produce up to 500 lookalike audiences!

For more information on Facebook Lookalike Audiences, check out their help centre guide!

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There you have Hopper HQ’s top social media marketing tips for Instagram and Facebook!

I hope you utilise the information in this guide to smash your 2023 objectives out of the park, and would love to hear from you if you have any comments or questions!

Hopper HQ is a social media scheduling and management platform that frees up time to focus on the fun creative stuff! Named in the Top 5 Most Popular Social Media Marketing Software list 2018. Start your 14-day trial today.

The post A Guide To Social Media Marketing 2024 appeared first on Hopper HQ.

With over 8 million business profiles on Instagram, the app is a hub for brands and so Instagram marketing is a necessity in any social media strategy. But with all that noise, how can you be sure your company will be heard? The answer is with a killer Instagram marketing strategy!

This article will help guide you through the process of making a winning Instagram marketing strategy, and ensure you reach your business objectives through the app…

Contents:

1. Audience 
2. Objectives 
3. Competitors
4. Content Strategy 
5. Editorial Calendar 
6. Schedule Content 
7. Plan Captions 
8. Brand Guidelines 
9. Track Progress 

1. Determine Your Audience

First thing’s first, who are you trying to reach with Instagram marketing? Are you certain your audience are using the app? For example, it’s good to know that 68% of Instagram users are female and that the majority of users are under 30. Carrying out market research into your target demographic is vital before you start putting out content. Determine the age, gender, location, interests (even diets) of your ideal audience so that you can ensure you’re catering your content appropriately!

Once you have that demographic in mind, go a step further to determine other behaviour:

• What kind of hashtags are they using?
• What locations do they hang out at?
• What other brands are they interested in?
• Who do they follow on Instagram?

This audience research does not take long, and is an important first step in focusing your Instagram marketing strategy!

2. Determine Your Objectives

What do you want your Instagram marketing to achieve?

When creating an Instagram marketing strategy, it’s important to keep tangible business objectives at the forefront to avoid wasting time and resources. Write a list of targets that you’re aiming to hit through Instagram marketing. These will naturally vary depending on business and industry, but could be anything from growing an engaged community, to increasing brand awareness, to driving conversions!

Each of these objectives will have different KPIs and metrics to track, and will require different forms of content. If you can narrow these down early in your Instagram marketing strategy, it will help you and your team stay on track — especially because it’s easy to get carried away making content! There are lots of tools out there that will support every stage of your Instagram marketing strategy — take a look at this Instagram poster maker.

3. Analyse Competitor Content

As important as market research is for determining your audience, it’s also very beneficial for analysing your competition! When creating an Instagram marketing strategy, identify big players in your industry on Instagram and see what they’re doing well, and what you think you could do better. Remember that their target audience is also your target audience, so here are some things to consider:

• What is their engagement rate? (likes + comments ÷ no. of followers x 100)
• Do they respond to comments?
• What kind of questions are their followers asking?
• Which hashtags are they using?
• What form of content are they predominantly using?
• What is their call to action?

Running an audit check like this on your main competitors is useful for learning about the space, finding what works best, and getting to know your Instagram audience better!

When creating an Instagram marketing strategy, identify big players in your industry and see what they're doing well on the app, and what you think you could do better!
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To take your Instagram marketing to the next level, check out:

#⃣ All-In-One Guide To Instagram Hashtags #⃣

4. Create A Content Strategy

Potentially the most crucial part of your Instagram marketing strategy is deciding what to post in order to best showcase your brand AND reach your business objectives. Content creation uses a huge amount of resources in a company, so you want to be getting it right. This stage of the Instagram marketing strategy involves weighing up the following forms of content for your audience:

• Photos
• Videos
• User-Generated Content
• Stories

And then considering other Instagram marketing techniques such as:

• Contests/Giveaways
• Influencer marketing
• Carousel posts
• Collaborations/Takeovers

All the while ensuring your Instagram feed is cohesive and aesthetically pleasing!

Based on your audience and competitor research, you probably already have a good idea about the form of content that will work best for your Instagram marketing. For example, if you sell a product which is photographable, naturally your product will be the foundation for your content. Whereas if you sell an online or in-person service, it might be that you share useful information or updates in the form of text posts, or document your company lifestyle with behind-the-scenes insights.

Take a look at these very different examples of Instagram marketing side by side. As a product-based brand, GATO use their Instagram account to display their desserts in a creative and attractive way. Whereas SaaS brand Slack uses theirs to share business announcements and company culture. Both are valid Instagram marketing strategies for very different brands and audiences!

 Click here for in-depth tips on producing great Instagram content for your business! 

5. Creating A Content Calendar

Hand in hand with a content strategy comes a content calendar. Now you know what you’re posting, the next step in your Instagram marketing strategy is deciding when and how often it should be published. You don’t want to end up scraping the barrel for last minute content, so having an editorial calendar will enable you to be organised and plan your feed around upcoming events, announcements, or social media holidays!

Using a calendar to manage your Instagram marketing will also help to see the gaps in your content plan to ensure you’re posting consistently. Consistency is more important than frequency on Instagram to help build a reliable relationship with your audience! The Instagram algorithm will also favour an account who posts twice a day every day, over one that posts 6 times on a Monday and then not again til the weekend.

The best tactic for choosing how regularly you post is looking at when your followers are most active during the week! You can connect your business Instagram account to our free Best Time To Post On Instagram tool to access this data – and then plan your content calendar accordingly!

6. Schedule Content In Advance

Make your Instagram marketing easier by turning your content calendar into your content schedule! Using an automated scheduling tool like Hopper HQ, you can bulk upload your photos and videos for the month (or even further in advance) and have them published straight to Instagram when you want them. Including scheduling in your Instagram marketing strategy massively helps organisation, and frees up loads of time for the big (and more fun) tasks like content creation!

The content schedule on Hopper HQ helps you visually plan beautiful social media feeds — just set the time and we’ll do the rest!

Instagram scheduling offers great foundations for incredible Instagram marketing, but that’s not to say that you can’t also post manually if something comes up that you hadn’t planned. It’s there to help your content plan — not restrict it!

Take a minute to read to our guide: How To Schedule Instagram Posts (And Why You Should) for more info

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7. Plan and Schedule Captions

Another important thing to factor into your Instagram marketing strategy is captions! This is where you actually speak to your audience and get the chance to convey a narrative about your brand. Your audience will get to know you through your captions, and so you need to be confident in the brand voice you’re putting out. Depending how many people manage your account, you’ll need to decide and agree on the tone of voice for your captions, as well as smaller details like whether you use emojis or not (more on this in the next section).

Hashtags are also a vital part of your Instagram marketing strategy, and your captions or first comments is where they’ll go! Throughout the process of analysing your target audience and  competitors, you should have gained an idea of the hottest hashtags for your industry, but it’s always worth doing more research. Using a tool like Hashtagify you can get analytics for any hashtag to make sure it’s going to get you the most reach.

You can also check out our top hashtag lists across this range of industries:
Top Photography Hashtags 
Top Food Hashtags 
Top Health & Fitness Hashtags 
Top Fashion Hashtags 

As captions are so important, they’re not something to be rushed on the spot! You can also schedule your captions and first comments on Hopper HQ, in order to craft the perfect narrative.

8. Establishing Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are vital when creating an Instagram marketing strategy, especially if you operate in a large team. This stage refers to your company’s behaviour/activity on Instagram! You need to get these small details down into a communal document so that all team members are on the same page when it comes to Instagram marketing.

Make this accessible to anyone who works on your Instagram marketing for reference when uploading, writing captions, and speaking to customers. Here are some things to include, re-capping on all the information in this guide:

• What type of content your brand posts
• How often your brand posts
• What hashtags are always used
• What hashtags are never used
• Language used in captions, comments and direct messages. Is your brand voice casual or formal? Do you sign off personally or always reply as ‘the brand’?
• Use of emojis
• Protocol on responding to tagged photos and mentions in Stories
• Banned words/topics

Again, there’s no right or wrong answer for brand behaviour/voice on Instagram, as long as it’s consistent! Engaging with your audience is very important, so make sure if people are taking time to comment on your content or send you messages that they get a quick and engaging response. This is a step in creating an Instagram marketing strategy that people often overlook so if you take the time to do it you’ll be a step ahead!

9. Track progress

The important thing with Instagram marketing is that you’re always testing, learning, and optimising your content. There’s no point spending time and resources on content that doesn’t achieve its objectives. In crafting your Instagram marketing strategy, make sure you’re dedicating time to track important metrics that will help you find out what content works best!

Using Instagram Insights you can gain a basic idea of what’s working and not working for your audience — take a look at our guide to Instagram Insights to find out what all the metrics mean. However, for businesses it helps to use a specific desktop tool such as Hopper HQ Analytics!

Taking an example from our own Instagram account — we can see that our Tuesday Tips are some our best performing types of content. This then informs us what our audience are looking for. For example, if you notice that the behind the scenes snaps of your colleagues bring in more engagement and start more conversations than your quotes of the day, prioritise the former! Using Analytics you can easily keep on top of your best performing content and ultimately discover the perfect recipe for Instagram success. Take lots of time on this step in the creation of your Instagram marketing strategy, as it’s definitely one of the most important.

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Parting Words

Good luck creating your Instagram marketing strategy! Let me know if there’s any other steps you and your team find helpful when mapping this stuff out  Tweet me @Nicola_HHQ

Want even more info? Take our Everything Instagram video course, where each section will cover important aspects of an Instagram marketing strategy and guide you through how to make your own!

TRY HOPPER HQ FREERefreshingly Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.

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Happy posting!

Hopper HQ is a visual planning and management tool for Instagram, bringing the creativity back to social media scheduling and freeing up time to focus on the areas of marketing you enjoy most Try for free with our 14 day trial.

The post How To Create A Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy appeared first on Hopper HQ.